Community questions the novelty and trust model
2 Sep 22 4:00 PM · 1d ago · 6 comments · 1 source · development 2 of 5
Hacker News commenters noted that the two-hop relay design resembles Apple's iCloud Private Relay and prior multi-hop systems, and questioned why users should trust a US-based company over the Swedish Mullvad partner.
“This is like Apple iCloud Private Relay, and other multi-hop privacy systems that have been built on and off over the last several decades.”
barathrObscura VPN service providerMullvad Exit hop operator and privacy-focused VPN partnerdongcarl Obscura team member
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What people said 6 voices · verbatim
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Mullvad is a Swedish company, which has stricter privacy protection laws in place.According to Obscura's legal page, it is a New York-based company [0]. Under US law, a secretive court order could compel a US company to update software or implement targeted logging on a specific user without notifying that user.The only scenario where Obscura…
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i am very skeptical of most vpn companies, and while i haven't looked too hard at obscura, it is worth noting the official partnership with mullvad (https://mullvad.net/en/blog/mullvad-partnered-with-obscura-v...) which is certainly a positive signalside note: i really wish more companies did the no email + randomized account number flow. there is…
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This sounds pretty neat, and I do dig the website, though I can’t help but think it’s an odd combination to have bitmap/pixelated fonts and graphics inside perfect squircles.Seems like you guys have two distinct ideas of a visual identity completely at odds there. Shape contrast is nice and can be rather fun to play with, but it has to be handled…
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So two hops, basically. First hop sees your IP address but not the website you're going to, second hop sees website but not IP address. Similar to Private Relay:
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I don't understand the point of this.Many (if not all) of the benefits on the landing page are available in Mullvad too, which is a more mature and reputable product, has all clients fully open-source, and powers the exit servers for Obscura.Why should I choose this over Mullvad?
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How does this prove Obscura and Mullvad can't just both gather tracking data and then just combine it on demand?
All 5 developments of Obscura launches two-hop VPN designed so it can't see user… →
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